Imagine BBC 1 McCullen series editor Alan Yentob, Director David Morris.

Last Tuesday I watched this documentary about the war photographer and photojournalist Don McCullen. Sometimes you like somebody and I liked Don McCullen. I’m biased, of course, his working class roots appealed to me. Brought up in London, I think it was Shoreditch, he won a scholarship to study art, but part of a big family he had to work, bring in money and stumbled into photography almost by accident. His early pictures of the working class hardmen he lived beside won him an award and his photos were printed in The Observer. More importantly he was paid £50 that was well above several weeks’ wages for the ordinary working man. McCullen thereafter worked for The Observer, The Times and several other papers. I make it sound like a smooth progression, but these things never are. He followed the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Congo, Vietnam, Cyprus, the Far East: Israel’s wars (ongoing), Syria massacres, Lebanon’s too, but what stood out for me was the famine in Biafra. A modest man, McCullen brought that to the world’s notice. He admitted to being addicted to wars and his family life suffered. His photo the thousand-yard-stare, a combat soldier in Vietnam suffering from shock, is world renowned and the subject of a story here. http://abctales.com/story/hudsonmoon/train-wreck